RE: >> the electoral college makes the whole process fair, especially
between small and large population states.

This is an indication of how we accept the premise as valid.
The Electoral college made sense in another era when populations weren't nearly
so large. Maybe it would be fairer if the Presidential Candidate had to
win 26 states, instead of 270 Electoral votes.

Let's say California has 41 Electoral votes (I'm not certain of the number,
but that's probably close). Now let's say 8,000,000 vote, and the state
goes to candidate X, with 60% of the vote, or 4,800,000 votes. This
leaves 3,200,000 votes for candidate Y, but he/she garners NO electoral
votes. Now, lets take 10 other states with a TOTAL of
40 Electoral votes and a vote count of of 8,000,000. These
states are all won by Candidate Y with percentage win of 80% to
20% for X.

Here is how this totals up:

Electoral Votes

Candidate X = 41

Candidate Y = 40

Popular Vote

Candidate X = 6,400,000

Candidate Y = 9,600,000

Now this is a hypothetical, and I'm going to have to do some more
research in my voluminous spare time, but there are probably similar
scenarios that are 100% feasible where the most popular candidate can
have a sizeable lead but still fail to win the Electoral College election.